The market, Salonica

The market, Salonica

Wednesday, 8 March 2017

There’s no money

At Monica’s next lesson,
there was no Daddy, just as Daddy had predicted. There was a new lamp on the
dining room table. He had said that, too. The lamp has a long, silver neck that
you twist around to suit you. It’s so bright I turn it away. I call it my hair
dryer. The first time I said it, Monica laughed, but only the first time.

Her
mother wasn’t home, not bad news in itself, though Daddy said she would be. Auntie
opened the front door. When Monica and I were alone, she said, straightaway, “There’s
no money.”

Daddy
had not mentioned this. A new lamp is one thing; abundant light, but you can’t
live on that. Auntie should have told me when I got there. She’s spineless, I thought. I looked at the little girl who was with
me. There was no money; it was a problem, but she was nine. It wasn’t her job
to tell me.

“It’s
not your fault,” I said, thinking: This
child is worth more than her adults. In all these months, I haven’t changed
my mind.

At
the end of the lesson, Auntie came in. She looked as if she didn’t want to.

“Her
mother didn’t leave any money,” she explained, then turned to Monica, and
frowned: “Why didn’t you tell me?”

It
happens now and then, no money at the end of a lesson. Mostly, I assume it’s
not on purpose, and go back. But it was two weeks till the next lesson. They’d
forgotten once. They could forget again. When I arrived next time, the door
mightn’t open at all. It’s happened before, more than once, at other addresses.
On the bright side, as it were, they had a new lamp. It shed a ray of light on
the future. There’d be work at that table, lessons even. But they mightn’t
involve me.

I
decided to go back, if only to collect the money they owed me. I could sack
Daddy later – I’d done it to other Daddies – but sacking him would mean sacking
Monica, and I was fond of her. It was a bad start, though. Mother had only had
two tests, and she’d failed both of them. In fact, as I write this, she’s
failed the money test six times. Monica says it’s four. When I teased her about
it, she didn’t answer. She just lifted her little hand, and hid the thumb. Meanwhile,
I keep going back. I get paid in the end.

Their
house is up the road, three bus stops away. It’s convenient. It’s another
reason to go back, if I needed one. I see Monica sometimes, outside the lesson,
on the bus or train. The first time, she was by herself, coming home from
school. In her uniform, she looked innocent. The bus was crowded. I didn’t
catch her eye.

I
mentioned it in the next lesson. She said she hadn’t seen me.

“Are
you sure?” I pressed. “I don’t mind. I would’ve ignored me too.”

The
last time I saw her outside lessons, we were also on the bus. I was sitting
near the back. She got on. When she caught sight of me, she grinned, and sat across
the aisle. Her mother was with her, and her two, younger brothers. It was
Sunday. They’d been to church. They were in their best clothes. Monica was
holding a special bag.

“What’s
inside?” I asked. She showed me. When a girl lets you look in her bag, you feel
you know her better. Mother ignored me. I thought, OK, but it was odd. She apologised in the next lesson.

“I
didn’t recognise you!”

“I’m
glad,” I joked. “I get recognised everywhere I go.”

We laughed, but she hadn’t known me, and still
let me talk to her daughter. It was another test failed.

About Me

Spaid once slept in a
cemetery in Greece (it seemed like the safest place to spend the night outside). He was
forced off a bus in India by window-smashing rioters. He’s been robbed, and
mistaken for a thief, a priest, a concert pianist, Woody and Tony Blair. He was
examined by a dentist called Dr Fang. The rest isn't silence...

BBC Radio broadcast a
separate, humorous story set in South India. Like this story, tireless: reflects his
experiences in different countries and jobs.

An
Australian, he has travelled in over thirty countries, working as a language tutor
in Greece, Italy and Taiwan, as well as a teacher in India, Australia and the
UK, where he now lives with his wife.

From the author...

tireless: celebrates the creative
urge while satirizing the people who create.
I wanted to write a book that would keep attention on any page you
turned to, so the person who looked over your shoulder on the train to see what
you were reading would only look away when their station had come.

Harassed? Unloved?
Just watching life go by? Take
this hilarious ride through the narrator’s painful
world and find others who are even worse off than you. Next door you’ll meet
Jim and his outrageous
stories, the unattainable Olga, their dysfunctional children – as well as the
appalling Rat and his companion, Roquefort, who’ll work their way into your
life as they do with everybody else. In
thissatireon human behaviour,
they’re not fair, not fair at all.

The narrator, an
unemployed teacher and aspiring writer, lives in London.When Jim and Olga move in next door, his
imagination is fired by the unhappy wife’s nude sunbathing and the pompous
husband’s breathtaking tall stories.He
recalls his comic victories in the classroom, while fantasizing that Britain’s
south-east has broken off from the mainland.He remembers his own schooldays and considers the impact of young Miss
Bugler.These anecdotes, like Jim’s
stories, highlight the casual cruelties and misunderstandings in human
behaviour and the evasive nature of fulfilment.A turning point is Jim’s recollection of a night in India when he
hallucinated, suffering the taunts of the giant Rat and his close friend,
Roquefort, a miniature cat.Humiliated
by publishers’ rejections, by the rudeness of Jim’s daughter, Daisy, and even
by his barber, the narrator transfers his sense of failure to Rat, who enters
the narrative in a series of disturbing, yet uproarious adventures which merge
illusion with the real world.The
narrator removes the barber’s head, takes revenge on Daisy when she develops an
infatuation for him, and finally publishes something,
in contrast to a now unlucky Rat, who is arrested, almost has a nervous
breakdown, is refused restaurant service, anddisappoints
as an undergraduate at Oxford, where the noisy love-making of Bill and Penny
emphasises his loneliness.

‘A colon comes in handy
here, before examples: two dots on top of one another, like the cowboys who
copulate on Brokeback Mountain, on a slope so far away you need binoculars to
see them properly.’ ... from the chapter RAT
ARRESTED! in tireless: